Making Obamacare ‘work’ an Ender’s Game

If you haven’t seen the just-released movie or the novel upon which it is based, no worries. I’ve not yet seen the former and won’t reveal any major plot twists, nor the conclusion, of the latter, that I just finished reading after all the non-liberal-Obama-Democrat turkey was digested.

Ender’s Game, a military science fiction classic, originated as short stories in 1977 and first released as a novel in 1985, was authored by conservative and science fiction-master Orson Scott Card. His dystopian vision of an efficient totalitarian dictatorship, albeit dedicated to the worthy cause of saving humanity from destruction by aliens from outer space, reminds of how difficult was the achievement of America’s Founding Fathers and those that sought to form a more perfect self-governing union of free people pursuing their individual visions of happiness.

I have been disturbed to hear many fellow conservatives assert that Obamacare “can’t work”, and that if we would just let it fail, it will go away. Of course, it can’t “work” in any sense that makes sense to an educated electorate with alternatives; especially if by work one seeks the most necessary healthcare for the greatest number, at the lowest cost, with companies allowed to make profits and willing to take innovative risks.

I have just described a health care and insurance world that, if it ever existed, preceded even the abomination that is Obamacare or even the more socialistic single-payer plan that was Hillarycare. No, once non-means-tested Medicare and Medicaid, in the late 1960s, entered and distorted an American market already skewed by 50 state-health-insurance-market monopolies (given an inexplicable absence of federal government-enforced interstate commerce akin to those reserved only for beer, wine and spirits); the way was already paved for Obamacare-like appeals, especially when marketed with lies by the latest snake-oil salesman nominated by the Democratic Party.

The system we had before the Orwellian-sounding Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010 had “worked”, if you will for decades. The Edsel “worked” until it didn’t. The Soviet Union was not destined to inevitable failure. True, President Ronald Reagan pushed an inefficient economic model over the edge with a defense build-up, technology advantages and confrontations against Communist imperialism; but the defining factor was the “push”, and not that a nation of slaves that had survived its poor system for over 70 years couldn’t have lasted another 70 x 7.

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No conservative should relax in some pink glow of pleasure that the mere fact that Obamacare is now hurting millions with health insurance policy cancellations and premium hikes which will ipso facto result in a re-education of sufficient numbers of Americans to elect enough conservative Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare with a system that really works in rational, utilitarian way.

No, in order for that to happen, Republicans must now, and every day until Obamacare is repealed, resist half measures that could help Obamacare mandates survive that will eventually kill the private insurance industry; but also not oppose measures, albeit with strict scrutiny, that can relieve the suffering of victims of Obamacare.

The best way to achieve the latter is for Republicans to propose repeal and replace plans like Georgia Rep. Tom Price’s and even Sen. John McCain’s means-testing-plus plan from his 2008 campaign, and others.

But the first step is to understand that bad policies can appear to “work” for long periods of time, especially when the greatest nation on Earth is the only advanced one left standing after a World War. Americans could become acclimated to a failed system even worse than the one that we lived under before Obamacare.

And about that Ender’s Game, it is instructive to remember that while Nazis and Commies enslaved their peoples, made the natural offspring of mothers and fathers children of the State, and dedicated most all state resources to megalomaniac, imperial and totalitarian dreams; it was the most free nation on Earth that produced enough wealth to put a chicken in every pot and produce the tanks, nukes and men that won that last world war.

Free market capitalism run by people sharing Judeo-Christian values, is the most moral and best economic model the world has seen since Eve bit the apple.

In 2008 my life changed when Barack Obama came into my front yard on a campaign stop. I asked him why he wanted to raise taxes, and he said that he wanted to “spread the wealth.” Since then, I have gained a national following as “Joe the Plumber” and now travel the country speaking and encouraging other everyday folks to get involved in the political process.